Seeing our future tasks and reviewing past projects for efficiency now takes a click with HourStack, when previously it took the better part of a day using spreadsheets!

Meet Tangible Value, a digital marketing agency focused on storytelling. Their services include content strategy, copywriting and content development, SEO, digital advertising, and design. We reached out to them and asked them how HourStack helps them become more productive in their agency.

The Problem Agencies Can Face

The problem that Tangible Value faced was that they lacked the ability to easily plan resource time into the future. They couldn't get a visual output for how resources were allocated into future projects and as a result, there was a need for a change with their current resource allocation planning strategy, inspired by the goal to get better at planning resource across the board.

They did experiment with other time tracking tools, but found that it was difficult to see planned time by individual resource, and reporting was limited only to a backward-facing view. This made it hard for managers and resources to know when they were over-leveraged.

The agency, based in San Diego, wanted to be able to plan time for tasks into the future and then track time against their estimated hour counts. They also needed a tool that integrated with the platforms they were already using day to day, such as Google Calendar and Asana.

Top 3 Business Needs of a Digital Marketing Agency:

  • Ability to plan resources into the future
  • Ability to visualize past and future planned and actual hour allocations
  • Integration with critical platforms

Enter HourStack

The founder and Chief Story Officer of Tangible Value, Matt Fellows started looking at HourStack in late 2021 to see if it could help them reduce their need for spreadsheets and daily meetings focused around resource management—a problem they knew took out much time in their already fully packed day. They started a trial and made use of the core features such as task scheduling and integrations with apps like Google Calendar and other task management tools.

The breadth of integrations was a key differentiator. A calendar app integration was hard to find in the market despite the obvious implication daily meetings have on hour counts and resource availability.

Matt went on to explain that HourStack stood out because the feature set met all of their needs. They liked the ease of the interface, the weekly calendar layout and the card-style tasks that show immediately when your day is getting too busy.

The initial reaction was that HourStack was easy to use and did everything that Tangible Value needed it to do. It was easy to get resources ramped up on the workflow of dragging and dropping cards onto days and tracking time on each task. Problem solved!

Key Features HourStack Offers to Digital Marketing Agencies:

  • Card style task tracking
  • Integrations with Asana and Google Calendar
  • Reporting of data for transparency

If we hadn't signed on with HourStack we probably would have had to develop a piecemeal solution and relied exclusively on weekly meetings with resources to check on planned allocation. HourStack clearly demonstrates an understanding of the need to not only accurately track and plan time but to do it in a way that is easy for resources to use.

So if you haven’t already started a trial for your digital marketing agency, start here and reach out to us if you have any questions about how to get HourStack working seamlessly within your team’s workflow. We hope you will be as impressed, and productive, as Tangible Value now are.

Updated September 21, 2022 in Stories